Lacy, Petr

Lacy, Petr Petrovich 

Born Oct. 30 (Nov. 9), 1678, in Limerick, Ireland; died Apr. 19 (30), 1751, in Riga. Russian field marshal (1736); count (1740). Son of a member of the gentry.

Lacy served as an officer in the English Army from 1691 and the Austrian Army from 1698 and entered the Russian service as a lieutenant in 1700. He participated in the Northern War of 1700–21, beginning with the Battle of Narva of 1700, and distinguished himself in the Battle of Poltava of 1709. He became a member of the Military Collegium in 1723. Lacy was appointed commander of the troops in Lifliandiia in 1726 and governor of Riga in 1729. In 1733–34, Lacy commanded a corps sent to Poland in support of the Polish king Augustus III and defeated the followers of Stanislas Leszczynski, the claimant to the Polish throne.

In the Russo-Turkish War of 1735–39, he commanded the Don Army, which captured Azov in 1736. In 1737 he crossed the Sivash on the Arabat Tongue, bypassing the Perekop, and defeated the troops of the Crimean khan in two battles (on June 12 and 14). After a second crossing of the Sivash in 1738, Lacy took the Chufut-Kale fortress in the Crimea. He became governor-general of Lifliandiia in 1740. Lacy was appointed commander in chief of the Russian Army in the field during the Russo-Swedish War of 1741–43. He defeated the Swedes at Villmanstrand in 1741, captured Fredrikshamn and Borgå in 1742, and in August 1742 surrounded a Swedish corps of 17,000 men and forced it to surrender. Lacy became governor-general and commander of the troops of Lifliandiia in 1744.

L. B. LEONIDOV